


have and hold

by mortalitasi



Series: dog days [4]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, FemShep - Freeform, Female Shepard - Freeform, Mass Effect - Freeform, Romance, alliance timeline, kai leng - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-20 23:45:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1530191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two dumb kids in the Alliance, one stolen moment among many. This was then, when things were better, and it was still easy to believe in a light at the end of the tunnel. Like I said - dumb. But we were all children, once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	have and hold

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the incomparable Ariel (orisoni on tumblr) for her amazing, wonderful Shepard, Amirah, and her chosen poison, Mr. Kai Leng. Their story is a delight and I'm always happy and privileged that she gives me such leeway with them. Anyway, here they are, a first upload in hopefully a series of many. Enjoy! :)

It occurs to him that he should probably do something.

She tells him as much.

“If you keep standing there,” she says through lips stiff with the anticipation of judgment, “I may just put the goddamn clothes back on.”

That’s right. She’s sitting on the edge of the – admittedly large – bed in nothing but her freckled skin and the surprisingly bright pair of turquoise underwear she’s got on today.

Amirah can be surprising like that. She prioritizes quiet and discipline and stability, but then paints her nails the color of cobalt and emphasizes the sweep of her lashline with green that brings out the shards of something cold and discreet in her eyes. She’s all about little details like those, about infinitesimal parts adding up to a greater whole. She makes understanding her a challenge, consciously or not, and now she’s willingly laid herself bare, in more ways than one. It’s an admission of insane trust. He doesn’t know what to do with those. It’s… new.

“Don’t,” is all he says.

He just shuffles his way over the discarded piles of her tank-top and her shorts (glancing at them there on the floor just reminds him how small they are – how small _she_ is) and then sits down beside her on the bed, making a dip in the mattress. They stay there for a moment, him with his hands clasped loosely in his lap and her staring at that one conspicuously dark spot on the floor as though it’s going to start saying interesting things very soon. He’s never seen her this outwardly conscious of herself. Amirah moves with the effortless grace of someone who’s forgotten about the concept of being watched. These are parts of her she’s never shown to anyone else.

Today hadn’t been anything special, either. He’d just touched her, like he always does, because he’s the more tactile of them both, only this time somewhere between leaving her gasping for breath and her small hands pulling at his shirt, she hadn’t stopped him like she’s always done. He had known they’d move forward someday, he just supposes it wouldn’t have been so soon. Or maybe it’s just his impression that it’s soon, because he’s at no time done this before. Things about bodies and pleasure have always been momentary, temporary, more about relieving some strange unshakeable pressure than anything like what he has with her.

It’s been forever and a lifetime since something mattered. As such, he’s a little out of touch with the idea of giving a shit about the consequences of his actions. The young woman (but still two years older, his brain reminds him studiously) on his left isn’t someone he wants to rush. The sentiment is _alien_ , to say the least.

Words aren’t his strength, and never have been. They won’t become that in the near future, either. But he’s got to try – once will be enough.

“You’re sure?”

She just tucks the pale section of her hair behind a pretty ear and looks at him with clarity that’s almost frightening. “Yeah,” she says softly. “I’m sure.”

He starts with brushing the hair away from her shoulders, watches it fall evenly against her back, cards his fingers through it, not missing the little jump of tension in her muscles. He’s learned that she doesn’t like showing anyone she reacts, but it’s just them here. The base has cleared out because most of the students have homes to go to when summer rolls around. They’re some of the few that have neither house nor family to depend on. Loans are already a part of their lives. Living on-base isn’t free. Nothing is free.

Leng runs a fingertip down the strong line of her spine. She’s so much unlike him, physically, it’s almost amusing. Everything about her is lean and economic… and miniature.

He’s taller than her even sitting next to her like this. The edge of her shoulders just brushes up against the place where his upper arm ends. The dip of her ankles is small enough that he can span it with one hand, but the illusion he used to have about being stronger doesn’t exist. It hasn’t for a few years now. She could throw him halfway across the room without breaking a sweat, shirt or no shirt. She’s done it before. His hand is sliding down to the small of her back when he feels the buzz of biotics build up beneath his palm, gathering over the area there like a second skin. He yanks his hand away like he’s been burned, waiting for the stomach-lurching loss of gravity that always comes before he’s tossed head-first into something solid, but what she asks mystifies him.

“Why’d you stop?” she mumbles, cracking one eye open. Goosebumps are rising and prickling on her arms and neck.

Leng waves the last of the biotic cloud clinging to his skin away with one sharp movement, and her gaze is drawn there. “I thought…”

“Oh,” she says at last, looking like – like what? The expression she’s wearing is not a familiar one. Her brows are drawn together and her lips are pulled downward. He doesn’t catch on until the apples of her cheeks turn red under his attentive staring, and that makes his heart leap between his ribs. She’s _embarrassed?_ Amirah coughs into one hand and looks at the floor again. “You… were doing fine. It just happens when I’m – excited.”

She scowls at the final word out of her mouth, as though that was the last thing she ever wanted to say. He decides not to give her any more time to dwell on the misstep, and wipes the hair back from her face, leans over, and presses his mouth to hers.

If she said it was fine, he’s going to believe her. She goes still almost immediately before she readjusts, angling her body to face him. One of his hands sneaks back into initiating contact, lingering at the curve of her jaw. She feels astonishingly soft, as always. The scent of mint always hangs onto her. He hadn’t much noticed anything about it before, but he associates it with her now, just like he does with the blues and purples everywhere in her wardrobe, down to the clean and neat style with which she approaches everything. Living with her has made him kick some very old habits, though he’s managed to rope her into things like leaving the bed unmade.

One night after an especially long day of drills, she’d collapsed next to him on the mattress with her face pressed into the pillow, and he’d pulled the already messy sheets over her shoulders when she shivered.

“See?” he’d said through his exhaustion, barely able to move himself. Every muscle in his body had been aching with exertion. “Convenient.”

She’d agreed through a drowsy mumble, sounding somehow sad. “That’s what… I used to tell Jaz. Convenient…”

He hadn’t asked, the next morning, and she hadn’t brought it up again. They have a silent agreement about questions. No talk unless it’s started willingly. They both have things behind them they’d rather forget. He knows what that’s like, and he’s aware she does too. It’s another one of those unnoticeable measures of respect they afford to each other, the kind of allowance that no one else is mindful of.

Leng only pulls away when he feels something yanking at the back of his shirt. He takes a breath when they part, ready to ask what’s wrong when she pulls too hard and the shirt flips over his head, cocooning him from forehead to neck, and he stops moving, wriggling his arms. He tries shrugging it off, but that just makes the tangle worse, and he freezes when he hears her laugh a little.

“This is not funny,” he growls through the fabric, and she comes back into view a moment later, tousled hair, red cheeks and all, when she tugs it up and away from him. The shirt peels off easily and he’s left in his black sweats, with strands of his hair pressed to his face and shoulders from static buildup. Amirah is biting her lip to keep herself from smiling when she reaches up and wipes them off his forehead, her touch almost gentle.

“Sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all. Moments like this make him wonder what she was like before she came to the Alliance, but he can and will wait to be told. It’s not the same thing to dig through archives and to learn through impersonal reports. He has a good idea of what happened, and bringing it up is something he doesn’t plan on doing unless she does it first.

“Whatever,” he grumbles while pulling his feet up to the bed and stretching out for her again.

They fall back together with a whispering rush of sheets and they lie there side by side for a while, exploring, unrushed, and he learns the places where to focus his attentions on to make her tense up or loosen like she’s melting; he likes hearing her, even if she’s not very vocal to begin with. With Amirah, responses like a tightening of grip or a slight edge of harshness in breathing means success. His brows rise in surprise at her enthusiasm when he feels her slide closer, but he can’t contain at least a grunt of discomfort when she sits atop him, blowing hair out of her face with one decisive puff of air.

“You seem to know what you’re doing,” she tells him, her voice husky. Nice, he thinks. Very nice.

 _You too_ , he almost says, if the lovely, toned legs on either side of him are any indication. That is almost dangerously distracting. “Would you rather I didn’t?”

She tilts her head at him thoughtfully, and the afternoon light washing in through the half-shut blinds behind them gathers around her in an almost-halo that highlights the runs of copper threaded through her thick hair. Like that, with the glow settling lazily on her skin, she looks the nearest to perfect he’s ever seen, in all eighteen years of bullshit and misery and stupid, stupid situations. It’ll become a comfort, after this encounter, a memory he will draw on at many times, the way people on Earth used to handle old photos when physical pictures were still popular. Just a glance, only a second of secret, private solace, of selfish assurance – and it’ll be enough.

“No,” Amirah admits, breaking him out of his thoughts. “Besides, I’m a quick learner. I’ll catch up.”

He’s sure she will.

“We’re talking too much,” he remarks. She raises a brow at him in the same manner she does when they’re sparring. He’s seen enough of it to know what it is: a challenge. He meets it by flipping them over (and he doesn’t miss the fact that she lets him do that, either) and is considering his next course of action when he notices that she’s smiling – really smiling, dimples and everything, even though she’s on her back underneath him with her hair splayed out on the mattress like a brown starburst. He can’t help it. He has to ask.

He narrows his eyes at her suspiciously. “What is it?”

Amirah just shrugs and links her hands behind his neck. “Nothing,” she says lightly before leaning up and kissing any other question right out of him. He’s sure the universe would forgive him for forgetting about everything else after that point, and if it wouldn’t – well, fuck the universe. He’s never really liked it anyway. It’s a shit place. Or, it has been, up until now. He’s willing to bet anything that has to do with the sound Amirah makes when he introduces his mouth to her neck can’t be _all_ bad.

They tumble around a little bit more, familiarizing themselves with the business of fitting together.

It’s mostly hands and trial and error for them. Though they don’t act it, at the end of the day they are little better than any other kids in the galaxy. Excusing the entire “I can kill a man at ten paces” thing, there isn’t much difference. He often forgets that vital truth. Only eighteen. There’s more ahead than there is behind, but right now it’s hormones and bumbling mistakes and awkward noises, silly, clandestine lessons in how to make each other happy for a few stolen instants. It feels _good_ being close to her, and it feels good to know her heart is racing.

He doesn’t startle the next time the biotics jump to life around her in a haze of sparking indigo and violet. It isn’t a big field or concentrated, just a throwaway triggered by emotion and sensation, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate the way they sometimes seem to suspend her from the hold of gravity – just small things, like the brief upward flow of her hair, as though she’s trapped underwater. They don’t feel anything as fierce as they do in combat. They’re more of a pleasant drone now, a chilly, effervescent cloud that seems as alive as the one they belong to.

The only time Amirah talks again is when they shimmy out of their respective (and honestly very measly) bits of remaining clothing, and he’s three fourths certain that it’s their proximity that has made her as playful as she is. He finds he doesn’t mind it.

“How’s _that_ going to work?” Amirah inquires in half-jest, half-first-timer concern, eyes turned downward. She doesn’t bother telling him about not needing protection – he already knows, so he just presses his lips to her brow, more encouraging in that action than he has been with a good many of his words. It’s all she needs.

It takes some effort to get them both where they need to be more than once, but he’s nothing if not serious about everything he does, and this is no different. Leng teaches himself how to bring out her every voice, from low sighs to stifled hums that end on high, trailing notes that cause him to strain with need. How the mighty have fallen, he thinks as he shuts his eyes and tries to memorize the feeling of holding her, of being in her. He has his face turned into the crook of her neck when her the network of pressure in her body clenches to a point and she lets go. Second success. Her fingers loosen in his hair, suddenly nerveless and limp. He hides a sheepish grin against her scalp.

“I might get why people like this so much,” she says breathlessly into the arch of his collarbone, making the skin there tingle pleasantly. There is evidence of her all over him. He likes it.

“You alright?”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

They’re still touching when she falls asleep with her head pillowed on his arm minutes later, her face serene and peaceful, devoid of the lines of stress and thought that so often occupy it when she’s awake.

He smoothes the hair away from her temples, the backs of his fingers brushing slightly at the scar high on her right cheek. She’s not going anywhere.

Even if he closes his eyes, she’ll still be here when he wakes up. It’s more surety than he’s had in ages. She’s stayed, longer than any other, fought him harder than anyone else. She’s real, and his. After all this time, he’s been given something to come back to. That, like so many other aspects about this, is new. He’s always been the one leaving, with a foot out the door and eyes turned forward, ahead, to the future. Maybe it’s alright to depend. Maybe it’s time to learn how to live instead of just surviving.

Maybe… he won’t hate the change.


End file.
